Marion Nestle reports that several supplement manufacturers are selling vitamins that promise to prevent or treat Ebola. The claims caught the attention of the FDA, which has issued warning letters to three of the manufacturers: Natural Solutions Foundation, Young Living, and DoTERRA International LLC. The agency lists specific claims it finds worrisome; for example, on a Young Living consultant's website, "Ebola Virus can not live in the presence of cinnamon bark."

Here's a screenshot from Natural Solutions Foundations' website:

An article on the Natural Solutions site talks about "the intentional introduction of Ebola into the United States by what will appear to be ISIS terrorists." It continues, "And it will happen soon, since we know from Dr. Rima's research that Ebola can become an airborne disease in temperate climates, such as North America's coming winter." It urges readers to prepare by stocking up on supplements that contain nanoparticles of silver: "The only protection we have against this new level of tyranny is making sure we do not get sick!!! The best way to do that is to make sure that EVERYONE you can reach has Nano Silver and knows how to use it."

Another supposed natural Ebola cure making the rounds: Vitamin C. Nestle found this gem on an alternative health information site called NaturalHealth365, which claims that a giant dose of vitamin C can cure Ebola (though it doesn't actually sell Vitamin C):

NaturalHealth365

It's not terribly surprising that supplement manufacturers have seized on Ebola. A new Harvard School of Public Health poll has found that 38 percent of Americans (up from 25 percent a few months ago) "are now concerned that they or someone in their immediate family may get sick with Ebola over the next year." That's quite a market.

You and your teeth could be victims of "creative diagnosis."

My household's level of confidence in dentistry is at an all-time low. About six months ago, my dentist informed me that my "bunny teeth" were likely getting in the way of my professional success, a problem he could correct with a (pricey) cosmetic procedure. If I let him fix my teeth, he told me, he was sure I would start "dressing better." A few months later, my husband scheduled a basic cleaning with a new dentist. Once they had him in the chair and looked at his teeth, they informed him that the regular cleaning wouldn't do at all: He would need to reschedule for an $800 deep cleaning. No thanks.

We were convinced we must look like suckers—until I came across an op-ed in ADA News, the official publication of the American Dental Association. The article, by longtime pediatric dentist Jeffrey Camm, described a disturbing trend he called "creative diagnosis"—the peddling of unnecessary treatments. William van Dyk, a Northern California dentist of 41 years, saw Camm's op-ed and wrote in: "I especially love the patients that come in for second opinions after the previous dentist found multiple thousands of dollars in necessary treatment where nothing had been found six months earlier. And, when we look, there is nothing to diagnose."

Some toddlers treated at one chain underwent as many as 14 procedures—often under restraint and without anesthesia.

"In recent years, I have been seeing more and more creative diagnosis," Camm told me when I called him at his practice in Washington state. A dentist, he said, might think, "'Well, the insurance covers this crown, so I'm not hurting this patient, so why don't I just do it?' That's the absolutely wrong approach."

Poking around, I found plenty of services catering to dentists hoping to increase their incomes. One lecturer at a privately operated seminar called The Profitable Dentist ($389) aimed to help "dentists to reignite their passion for dentistry while increasing their profit and time away from the office." Even the ADA's 2014 annual conference offered tips for maximizing revenue: "Taking time to help our patients want what we know they need," notes one session description, "can drive the economic and reward engine of our practice."

Upselling in dentistry isn't a new phenomenon, but it's having a moment. One reason: Dental school tuition—and debt—has doubled since the '90s. According to the American Dental Education Association, students who graduated in 1996 were in the hole $112,000 (in 2013 dollars), on average, while 2013 grads were a whopping $215,000 in debt—28 percent were on the hook for $300,000 or more. By contrast, the average med school grad owed $170,000. ADEA executive director Richard Valachovic explained that one reason dental schools have jacked up tuitions is the rising costs of technology for student labs.

In any case, a generation ago, newly hatched dentists would join established practices as modestly paid associates, with the promise of eventually becoming partners. But these days, with dentists retiring later, there's less turnover in private practice. Instead, more and more young dentists are taking jobs with chains, many of which set revenue quotas for practitioners. This has created some legal backlash: In 2012, for example, 11 patients sued (PDF) a 450-office chain called Aspen Dental, claiming that its model turns dentists into salespeople.

That laser dentistry and whitening package may be a ploy to get you in the door so the practice can upsell you on more-profitable procedures.

Some corporate dentists appear to have crossed the line into fraud. In 2010, Small Smiles, a venture-capital-owned chain with offices in 20 states, was ordered to refund $24 million to the government after an investigation found that its dentists had been performing unnecessary extractions, fillings, and root canals on children covered by Medicaid. A new lawsuit alleges that some toddlers it treated underwent as many as 14 procedures—often under restraint and without anesthesia. (The group was banned from Medicaid this year.) Several other pediatric dentistry chains have been sued over similar allegations.

So what should you watch out for when you go for your next cleaning? First, beware of specials: That laser dentistry and whitening package may be a ploy to get you in the door so the practice can upsell you on more-profitable procedures. Van Dyk also advises caution if your dentist insists on replacing all your old fillings or always recommends crowns instead of fillings. And look out for excessive X-rays: The ADA says healthy patients need a full set (14 to 22) every two years at the most. If your dentist recommends a special "cone-beam" X-ray, get a second opinion, since, along with a 3-D picture of your mouth, it delivers a dose of radiation up to 18 times that of a traditional dental X-ray. While the Food and Drug Administration has approved cone-beam scanners, some radiation experts worry that dentists are using them when a standard X-ray would do just as well. Finally, when it comes to children's dentists, make sure to find a board-certified pediatric specialist, since not all dentists that cater to children have special training.

The practitioners I spoke to were quick to add that even dubious-sounding treatments are in some cases medically necessary. But if your gut says your dentist is going overboard on treatment, get a second opinion. "Will you have to pay a little more for another consult?" Camm asks. "Sure. But it could end up saving you a whole lot more in the long run."

We spoke to a doctor at the center of the frightening, ongoing outbreak.

Over the last two months, a severe pediatric respiratory disease called Enterovirus D68 (EV-D68) has made its way into nearly every part of the United States, sickening 500 children in 42 states. The virus, which primarily affects infants, children, and teens, causes wheezing and difficulty breathing. This week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that it is trying to determine whether EV-D68 is also responsible for polio-like symptoms (limb weakness and paralysis) seen in some patients—polio is also an enterovirus—and whether the virus is what cause the deaths of four infected children.

Diagnosing EV-D68 is proving to be a challenge. Most hospitals don't have tests that can distinguish between it and hundreds of similar viruses—to make the call, they have to bring in state health departments or the CDC. To further complicate matters, CDC spokeswoman Darlene M. Foote says that EV-D68 causes "no symptoms at all" in some patients.

We caught up with Mary Anne Jackson, a physician who heads the infectious disease department at Mercy Children's Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri—the first facility to report suspected cases of EV-D68—about her team's experience with the outbreak.

"The big question now is: Is this going to be like old-fashioned polio? How common is this going to be?"

Mother Jones: How did your people identify the first cases?

Mary Anne Jackson: On August 15, I got an email from our emergency physician, who was seeing several children—five or six over one shift—with severe respiratory symptoms. Then we discovered that we had an unusually high rate of positives on a test called Multiplex PCR for a certain class of viruses: enteroviruses and rhinoviruses. The test does not say which one it is, and there are more than 100 rhinoviruses and 100 enteroviruses. But rhinoviruses are more of a late fall/winter thing. We are right in the midst of our enterovirus season. We had unusually severe respiratory disease, a microbiology signal. From that, I was already worried this was an Enterovirus D68. I knew it was rare, but in 2008, there were scattered reports in the literature of severe respiratory symptoms and EV-D68. But they were in very tiny clusters of just a few patients.

MJ: What did you do when you began to suspect it was EV-D68?

From mid-August to October 1, a total of 500 people in 42 states and DC were confirmed to have respiratory illness caused by EV-D68. CDC

MAJ: On August 19, we notified the CDC. By that point, beds were fully occupied and our intensive care unit had several of these patients. We asked other physicians nationwide and we got reports, especially from the Midwest, saying they were seeing the same thing. By this point, we have had more cases in our hospital than had been identified in the whole previous decade by the CDC. I'm guessing that the states that are not affected just have not recognized the cases yet. I think this is going to involve virtually every state. If this is D68, this is going to be an unusually large outbreak.

MJ: At what point did you begin to suspect that cases of limb weakness could also be caused by EV-D68?

MAJ: We know that higher-numbered viruses in the D-class of enteroviruses can cause neurological symptoms. So we started looking at viral meningitis and seizures. We found a case of transverse myelitis, which is a very common neurologic syndrome. It involves pain or weakness in limbs, often in young males. We found nothing out of the ordinary. But then we had another case a week later. We looked at the MRI, and it looked more typical of what we'd see in a polio-like illness. In Denver they were seeing nine cases [with neurological symptoms] over the course of about a week. They had four cases that tested positive for EV-D68. They had already asked for the CDC to come investigate. Then we had another case here.

MJ: But if only four of the cases tested positive for EV-D68, then why do they think that's what's causing the neurological symptoms?

Dr. Mary Anne Jackson Mercy Children's Hospital

"With polio, you had hundreds of kids in iron lungs, but it was the vast minority."

MAJ: The virus is only going to be in the nose [the site of the test] for a period of time, and the timeframe between onset and presentation can be a few days to a few weeks. The virus could be gone by the time the limb weakness occurs. So far, there is still nothing to prove that the neurological symptoms have to do with EV-D68. But EV-D68 is the focus of the investigation.

MJ: Are the neurological symptoms temporary or permanent?

MAJ: So far, most of these kids with neurological symptoms are not getting better. Take this with a grain of salt, because it's too soon to say whether they will fully recover.

MJ: So what's next?

MAJ: The big question now is: Is this going to be like old-fashioned polio? How common is this going to be? Even with polio, 95 percent of patients had no symptoms, 4 percent had mild symptoms, 1 percent had nonparalytic neurologic manifestation—1 in 1,000 had a paralytic presentation. Yes, you had hundreds of kids in iron lungs, but it was the vast minority.

MJ: What should parents know about the virus?

MAJ: We are reassuring parents that the most likely thing their kids have is a common cold. If your child has asthma, be aware of this respiratory manifestation, since we are seeing it more in children with a history of asthma. And even if your child doesn't have asthma, if they develop labored breathing, see a physician. Or if they develop limb weakness. This is not a subtle diagnosis.

Jurafsky, a professor of linguistics at Stanford, looked at hundreds of examples of food language—from menus to marketing materials to restaurant reviews. Along the way, he uncovered some fascinating patterns. For example: In naming foods, he explains, marketers often appeal to the associations that we already have with certain sounds. Crackers and other crispy foods tend to have names with short, front-of-the-mouth vowels (Ritz, Cheez-Its, Triscuits), while rich and heavy foods have longer vowels that we form in the back of our mouth (Rocky Road, Jamoca Almond Fudge). He also describes the shared linguistic heritage of some of the most common food words. Take salad, sauce, slaw, and salsa: All come from the Latin word sal, meaning "salted."

But it's Jurafsky's menu analysis that really stands out. Where most of us see simply a list of dishes, Jurafsky identifies subtle indicators of the image that a restaurant is trying to project—and which customers it wants to lure in. I asked Jurafsky to examine the menus of Taco Bell and its new upscale spinoff, US Taco Co., whose first location just opened in Southern California.

We started with Taco Bell's breakfast menu. Of course, everyone knows that the Tex-Mex fast food chain isn't exactly fine dining, but Jurafsky pointed to some hidden hallmarks of down-market eateries' menus.

The first thing that Jurafsky noticed about Taco Bell's menu was its size: There are dozens, if not hundreds of items. "The very, very fancy restaurants, many of them have no menu at all," Jurafsky says. "The waiter tells you what you're going to eat, kind of. If you want, they'll email you a menu if you really want it."

Next, Jurafsky picked up on descriptors. "So there's all of those adjectives and participles," he says. "'Fluffy. 'Seasoned.'" That's one thing that's common on cheaper restaurant menus—as if the restaurant feels the need to try and convince its diners of the quality of the food. A fancier restaurant, he explains, would take it as a given that the diner expects the eggs to be fluffy and the pico de gallo to be freshly prepared.

"Notice the word 'flavorful,'" Jurafsky says. "The cheapest restaurants use these vague, positive adjectives. 'Delicious.' 'Tasty.' 'Scrumptious.' Wonderful. Again, more expensive restaurants take all that as a given."

"The description specifies 'real cheddar cheese.' Just like all the other adjectives, 'real' tells you that they think customers are assuming that the cheese is not real, so they have to tell you that it is." Also, note that the word "jalapeño" is missing its tilde—the little squiggle over the "n" that signifies a "nye" pronunciation in Spanish words. Jurafsky isn't sure whether the missing "ñ" is linguistically meaningful, but keep it in mind, because it will become important when we look at US Taco Co.'s menu.

The words "double portion" and "lots" are also typical on the menus of cheap restaurants, says Jurafsky. "They want you to know you're getting enough food for your money."

Next, we turned to US Taco Co.:

"This is a hipster menu," Jurafsky says. "This isn't a linguistics thing, but there's a Day of the Dead skull on top and the desserts are served in mason jars. I mean, how hipster can you get?"

Let's take a closer look at some of the menu items:

"What the really upscale restaurants these days are doing is just listing their ingredients. They don't say "and" or "with." It's just a list. They're also using nonstandard capitalization, everything lower case or everything upper case, for example. Here they're making everything upper case. On the Taco Bell menu, they used standard capitalization."

Also, in "Wanna Get Lei'd" there's a reference to sex. Jurafsky explains that we often use sex metaphors to talk about fancy food, while for cheaper food, the metaphor of choice is often drugs. "The wings are addictive, or the chocolate must have crack," he says. "There's something about inexpensive foods that make us feel guilty. Talking about it in terms of drugs lets us put the responsibility on the food, not on ourselves."

"There are more unusual Spanish words on this menu," he says. Taco Bell has "burrito" and "taco." Everyone knows those. But "here we have 'molcajete' and 'cotija.' Every item has at least one Spanish word. And there's the "ñ" in jalapeño! For Taco Bell, there might be tension between English and Spanish. In a hipster place, it's okay to be authentic."

Of course, says Jurafsky, language trends are always evolving. What we consider hipster menu language now is not the same as it was a few decades ago. In his book, Jurafsky notes that for most of the last century, trendy restaurants used French words to signify their status (think au jus, a la mode, and sur le plat). To the modern ear, these sound pretentious. Today's fashionable restaurant menus have replaced French phrases with "carefully selected obscure food words and pastoral images of green pastures and heirloom vegetables," he writes. That is, "if they offer you a menu at all."

We spoke with the experts and crunched the numbers.

Along with plain white refined sugar, most hip coffee shops now offer "raw" sugar. I usually go with raw: The golden crystals and brown paper packets somehow make me think it's more wholesome than the conventional white stuff, which, as highlighted in a previous Mother Jonesinvestigation, many scientists now believe is far worse for you than the industry would have us think.

Sugar in the Raw, a leading raw sugar brand, suggests on its Frequently Asked Questions page that its product is indeed more wholesome. "White sugar is obtained by refining the sugarcane crystals to remove the molasses (and with that, trace nutrients)," it states. "Some nutritionists believe that the small amount of micronutrients retained in Sugar In The Raw® provides advantages over refined white sugar." Raw sugar is also more expensive: On Amazon, a four-pound bag of Sugar in the Raw retails for $12.99, versus $3.25 for regular.

So is the raw stuff really more virtuous? Sugar in the Raw could not be reached for comment, but a spokeswoman for the Wholesome Sweeteners brand of raw sugar explained to me that, like refined sugar, raw—technically called Turbinado—sugar comes from sugarcane (refined sugar can also be derived from beets). The main difference between the two is in the boiling of the cane juice: The juice for refined sugar is boiled several times to remove all the molasses, whereas Turbinado sugar is boiled only once.

The residual molasses gives Turbinado sugar "some flavor and texture other than just sweetness," says Katherine Zeratski, a registered dietitian with Mayo Clinic. But it doesn't provide any significant nutrition. Refined and raw sugar are "calorically identical," Zeratski notes. And while Turbinado sugar does contain calcium, iron, and potassium, it contains them in trace amounts. We used the USDA's National Nutrient Database to calculate a few comparisons:

By Katie Rose Quandt

While one 2012 study found that molasses from sugar cane acted as an antioxidant in laboratory cell cultures, Kimber Stanhope, a University of California-Davis microbiologist who focuses on sugars, said she was unable to find any research suggesting the same effect for cells in the body. She emails: "Given the lack of scientific evidence that consumption of molasses has any health benefits in humans, and the fact that the molasses content of Turbinado sugar is very low, it is certainly a stretch to suggest that Turbinado sugar is healthier than refined sugar."